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This is hardly new news but one worth reminding all businesses, that whether it’s your own staff or customers taking advantage of “free” WiFi access on your premises, if they breach digital rights protection or download illegal material you could be liable.
The old Labour Government rushed through the Digital Economy Act which has provisions to protect copyright holders and as part of this introduced the ’3 strikes rule’ whereby a subscriber of an Internet service could be kicked off after 3 copyright infringements. The legislation is complex and Ofcom were mandated to offer a code of practice for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) on how they were going to enforce various aspects of the Act. They published the code of practice as part of a Consultation.
There are major issues that can occur when offering free WiFi (especially if the network has no log on credentials such as open WiFi) and there are real world examples. Imagine that someone decides to use your network and access child porn, there’s a good chance that the Police may get involved. If that happens then it’s very likely the owner of the network will be charged, ALL their computer equipment will be confiscated whence it will be taken to a Police forensics lab for analysis.
Generally it’s then up to the ISP subscriber to prove they had nothing to do with the accessing of the illegal material. Eventually the computers will be examined and (hopefully) there will be no traces found of any illegal material. The subscriber says they ran an open network and hopefully the Police will drop the charges, if not it will go to court and maybe the judge will find no evidence of illegal material and the case may be dropped. These are big ifs and it’s a very risky path to take – and it can take a long time (many months of having a sex crime hanging over you). This isn’t a made up scenario, it does and has happened.
So all in all offering free (or otherwise) WiFi isn’t as simple as it may first seem; however BtL has a number of solutions that can go some way to protecting your business from misuse of the provided Internet connection that do not require any additional hardware. Please contact BtL to learn more.
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